The Lakers have to make a decision soon on whether they want to sign Manny Harris for the rest of the season. ED CRISOSTOMO, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Dividing a home on the west side of Detroit, on Birwood Street in the slums, is the case of how the newest member of the Los Angeles Lakers came to be called Manny.

His mother, Merrick Harris-Carter, insists it was because Manny Harris was serious from the get-go, a baby who “looked like a grown man.” His father, James Carter, has maintained for 24 years, that it comes from the “Scarface” character who terrorizes the streets of Miami as Al Pacino’s sidekick.

As nicknames go on a Lakers team that features the Black Mamba, Swaggy P, and still remembers the Big Aristotle, Manny is relatively mild.

But when your given name is Corperryale Ladorable Harris, how wild does your nickname need to be?

Origins aside, the newest Laker has been known as Manny for as long as he can remember. And despite what you might think (Sample question: Isn’t high school hard enough without being called Ladorable?), Harris said he was never really teased about his name.

“I’m just not good with jokes,” the newest Laker said. “Not those type of jokes. You want to play with my name, it’s funny for once or twice but I’m not going to keep playing.”

For Harris-Carter, the name was simple. Corperryale incorporates parts of the names of relatives: a cousin, an uncle, several of his nine siblings. And Ladorable has an even more simple explanation.

“I thought he was just adorable,” she said. “That was the first thing that came out of my mouth. … When people ask me about that name they always tell me, ‘You must have been on something when you named him,’ and I said I wasn’t.”

As a point of clarification, Harris’ middle name is frequently spelled L’Adorable, although to be grammatically true to his parents intentions, it is actually spelled with a lower-case “a,” no apostrophe, and a macron – the long line that dictionary nerds know indicates a long “A” sound – over the letter.

“Adorable,” however, hardly embodies the he-man perception of professional sports. But the Lakers claim to the best name in the NBA may be running short. Harris’ second 10-day contract will expire after the Lakers play at Minnesota on Tuesday, at which point the Lakers will either need to sign him for the rest of the season or let him return to the Development League, where he averaged 30.6 points in 13 games with the L.A. D-Fenders.

The Lakers added Harris on Jan. 16, and in eight games he has averaged 6.8 points and 3.3 rebounds. His span included an 18-point performance in New York, as well as a loss in Chicago when he found himself behind Taj Gibson on the winning buzzer-beater.

Harris grew up in a neighborhood that he described as “one of the worst” in Detroit. The basketball court was the gravel in his backyard. His first hoop was a blue milk crate with a hole cut in the bottom, strapped to a light pole so that after dark he and his friends could play in the dim light.

He didn’t get his first real hoop until he was a teenager. The first day the neighborhood kids played on it, the standard fell over and the backboard shattered, leaving them with only a rim on a pole.

“Everything had to be net,” Harris said before joking, “So you’d think I’d be a better shooter.”

But for Harris-Carter, the adorable one is a superstar, despite barely hanging on to a job in the NBA.

“Where we came from,” she said, “I think he is the first one out of the neighborhood that really made one of himself.”

Other than Harris there is Andre “Prince” Johnson, a Harlem Globetrotters’ dunk specialist.

Harris is fighting desperately to earn a legitimate toehold in the NBA, which might not happen with the Lakers.

“He has to get lucky like everybody else,” D’Antoni said. “Get a niche and find some room to be able to get comfortable in his skin. But he’s got NBA talent, yes.”

And, at the very least, he has an All-NBA name – an adorable one, even.

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